


Wish Me Well

by ensou



Category: Destiny (Video Games), Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Ahamkara, Ahamkidna, Alt-Power, Be Careful What You Wish For, Body Horror, Dragons, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-03 19:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17290064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ensou/pseuds/ensou





	1. Ovum

It starts, as these things always do, with a vial.

It starts with a vial and a girl and half of a remaining concoction that's colored a florescent pale green that slips down her throat like cough syrup that's sentient and trying to crawl back up the whole way down.

It sits, uneasily, in her stomach like a solid glob of rubber, and she has just enough time to regret it before there's an ice pick in her forehead, her skin on fire and bubbling and twisting, limbs fusing to her body as she curls into a whimpering ball of flesh.

She opens her mouth to scream, but no sounds come out and her skin peels back like it's turning inside out, unfolding and sloughing away, rolling down and off until there's nothing left but a pale white-and-black ovoid the size of what once was a girl, glowing with an internal light.

If she could see herself now, she'd undoubtedly think herself hideous. Still, she got her wish.

The girl with body image problems no longer has a body to worry about.

Noelle Meinhardt no longer has much to worry about at all.

But an egg is only ever a beginning, o reader mine.


	2. Hatch

The first wish carves reality like lines into scrimshaw.

It is an easy wish.

The six wish for  _her_  back.

She-that-is-unborn is lucky. It is not often that one is able to feed even before they become. And six all united for a singular happening with such fervor? It is a feast.

Her growth is measured not in weeks or months but in days and hours.

Still, she is not left unaffected. They wish for  _the-girl-that-was_  and the heaviness of their desire is all but guaranteed to leave an imprint on one so impressionable as an unborn child. And their minds hold such  _wonderful_  expectations of what could possibly be inside such an object as what  _she-who-was_  became.

When her shell cracks, the six are there almost instantly. They witness her rebirth in all its uncoordinated messy glory as she flops to the floor gracelessly, four legs and scales and skin and claws and wings and impossible feathers all.

She is there when the boy that desired the most speaks a name that is no longer true but is also true enough.

She answers with the voice of what she once was  _before_ , and it is enough.

This is how the first wish is granted.


	3. The Lie

Ahamkara: the illusion that one's ego depends on an object, or an idea, or a body.   
Ahamkara: the self-image realized.   
Ahamkara: the lie that makes itself true.

Ahamkara: the fact that twines itself between That Which Is and That Which Is Wanted.

Beware that gap, for it contains such sweet, succulent possibility. Beware the space between Subjective Desire and Objective Reality, for the difference holds the way to realization.

Beware that which makes what is not real, for what happens to that which is already?

Beware the Anthem Anatheme, the shibboleth, the curse that declares the separation between owner and owned, between object and subject.

Beware the whispers of worms and wyrms both, for you may find they give more than you expected.

Unless, of course, you don't mind that.

O student mine.


	4. Contact

It’s hard to imagine how someone could be any more changed by the vials they drank. Oliver’s power is subtle and changes him, but not anywhere near what happened to Noelle.

Sometimes it’s hard to even think of the small, (currently) feathered serpentine being wrapped around her upper arm with its head draped on her shoulder as anything even remotely similar to Noelle.

But then she speaks.

_The tiny thing—hardly larger than half her forearm—that tumbled out of that eerie glowing shell is licking itself clean of the small amount of fluid it was coated in when Francis spoke up._

_“Noelle?”_

_The creature halts, turning to them and opening its mouth to reveal needle-like teeth in the facsimile of a grin._

_“Who else?” it–_  she  _asks, and the steel-wire tension that had built in the room was suddenly gone, and they let the breaths they’d been holding go._

_“What– what happened?”_

_"Oh come on, Francis. Egg, scales, four legs,_  wings _," Noelle chides, raising her head up proudly._

_“Dragon?”_

_She tilts her head, grin still in place, and Marissa has to double-check what she’s seeing. Noelle’s form is shifting, feathers disappearing and snout and neck elongating even as they watch, as if to solidify the answer._

A cat-sized dragon. A very cuddly cat-sized dragon. If she wasn’t with Francis or in Jess’ lap, she was drooped over Marissa or climbing Luke like a scratching post.

“Hey Noelle?”

The girl-turned-dragon-thing raises her head, today’s fuschia iris with a square pupil dilating to focus on Mars.

“Why do you like being so close to us?” she asks, curious.

 _Before_ , Noelle had hated contact, had hated showing herself off, had hated casual intimacy. Now it was practically constant.

Noelle shifts slightly, tail wrapping around under Marissa’s arm on the left, wings and feathers rustling before settling back down against Mars’ back.

“Shouldn’t I?” she returns, and Marissa blinks at the turn-around.

“I-I guess? You just… didn’t. Before,” she says awkwardly.

Noelle twists around, head and neck turning upside down, and Marissa can feel her wings fold as she contorts, vertebrae coming around to slide across her own.

“Well, I’m hardly what I was before, am I?” their leader counters.

And Marissa can’t exactly argue that.


End file.
